razzes

went berry picking here a few weeks ago.
strange and beautiful.
strange to drive for so many hours, out of the crowd, out of one valley and into another, out of density and familiarity, out of the grid. into the rural places of the southern valley. flats ribbed for stretches with rises, fields burnished gold, crispy brown, emerald green, the alive and the recently departed side by side. off the highway, out into roads built to loop pasturelands, the houses seemed to respond to maps already laid out for them. none of them asked for their own place, houses but up against irrigation ditches and manure banks. the fine new faux stucco, the cobbles glued up against plywood framing, stilts of gleaming white cement, and a dirt front yard. sometimes tricyles. sometimes car bodies. the strangest juxtapositions.
the raspberry patch comes up directly to the road in a neighborhood that slants up towards the hills that cup Utah Lake. manicured lawns across the street, speed boats and dirt bikes at tight and rigid rank.
the raspberry patch itself is beginning to succumb to the decent of fall. brown and blown vines drooping. everywhere collapsed fruit, languid wasps, the sticky carpet of leaves and berries and dust between the rows. but! here and there! the gleam. a jewel bright fistful of berries bobbing beneath dead cane. the time we spent looking. it was time spent foraging really. modern day gleaners with milk cartons tied to our waists, seeing what we could pick off of summer and keep greedily while the sun is
still high.

no fine plans for the loot. thirteen pounds of berries, slowly slipping into juice and pulp. but we are undaunted. froze them up flat in the freezer to pull out on a dreary day in February where something bright and alive will stir us all from the deepest places.